Follow an artist who creates lampwork beads, pure silver and artisan jewelry. You can grow along with me and ask lots of questions. I will show you my work and talk about my artistic journey and my love of the art. Marketing handmade jewelry and findings will be an important topic. I will give you tips and tricks I have learned along the way. I am also into social networking, Twitter, Facebook, Plurk etc. So expect plenty of tips on how to use these tools to make your business grow.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I think the comraderie on Etsy is one of the best reasons to sell there. I have made so many new friends and business networking connections. The friendships are the immediate pay offs and I do believe that that if you work hard, link up with good hardworking people and make a good product that eventually you will get noticed. I have joined a number of groups on Etsy and each has brought good people into my world.. Although many of us are in competition, I find the willingness to help teammates is surprising but wonderful. I recently became a member of a group called the Etsy Twitter Team. They snag Treasuries and put each other's products in. They list the Treasury on their blog and then ask everyone to tweet it. Everyone gets a chance to be Shop of the Week and again it is promoted by all, knowing you will get your chance. I love this group.

Does snagging a treasury have an immediate payoff ? Yes. It feels good when everyone thanks you for including them. Of course it doesn't seem to often lead to sales. If anyone has a study on that I would love to see it.

I hope in that in the end, after all the articles, blogs, the hours promoting on twitter etc. That someone out there will see your product or recognize your talent and you wake up one morning and all that work had paid off financially. In a perfect world, tomorrow after my article is printed by http://handmademarketing.org and appears on blogs across the blogoshpere, I will have hundreds of new followers and they will be bidding the price up on my artisan jewelry. Hope your day will be as great as I plan on mine being.